Mourning old friends

Lehman Brothers were never really part of my intimate circle.  I don't expect to shed any tears over their passing, although no doubt as financial planners we'll spend a lot more time comforting and reassuring stressed and worried clients because of their actions.

This led me, in a maudlin moment,  to think of the vanishing of so many reputable (and some less reputable) companies from the UK's investment/financial services marketplace over the eighteen years that I've been an IFA.  Companies like...

FS Assurance	Crusader Life	Eagle Star
Provident Mutual	Providence Capitol	Provident Life
Scottish Amicable	Britannia Life	NPI
Equitable Life	Hill Samuel	National Mutual Life
ManuLife	Guinness Flight	LAS
Abbey Life	Target Life	NEL Britannia
TWEFS	Permanent	Royal Life
Royal Heritage	Sun Alliance	General Accident
Commercial Union	Which companies  have I forgotten?

Now, there's a few here I would never have touched with a barge-pole.  Equally well, this listing includes a generous dollop of well-established, fine and venerable institutions which served their policyholders well for generations, and were swept away almost overnight.  We were told at the time that this decimation of the market was a good thing, that the resulting consolidation would result in better-capitalised, stronger companies that would serve UK investors better.

And yet, who does not regret the loss of the small, but perfectly-formed National Mutual Life, or the innovative pensions-targeting Provident Mutual, or that stolid stalwart of retirement provision, NPI?  Instead, we are left with Norwich Union, an unnatural chimera that should have rightly been dispatched at birth.

My point?  I find it interesting that many local IFA firms in our area have outlived most of the big-name providers that they used to recommend to their clients.  Apart from the exceptions due to (a) retirement, and (b) strangulation by red-tape, the IFA community has shown itself to be remarkably adaptable and resilient and - dare I say - principled when it comes to making good quality, impartial advice available to ordinary people.  Such customers will have benefited from real, long-term continuity of service, compared with the fractured, discontinuous alternative if they had relied on product-providers for that advice.  I really hope that the FSA will recognise this as the RDR works its way through the planning process.

Fingers crossed!